The New Testament is a First Century Collection of Writings Christians around the world agree that each of the 27 books of the New Testament was written at some point in the first century, somewhere between A.D. 45 and 90 – by the actual men who are traditionally associated with them. In fact, many of us, once we’ve taken the time to investigate the matter, have concluded that every book of the New Testament, with the possible exception of the Revelation and a couple minor epistles, was completed prior to A.D. 70. One fact convinces us of this – the Destruction of Jerusalem, and the banishment of the Jews from their own city, a very personal, earth-shattering disaster for the Jews and Christians of the time, is only mentioned once in the New Testament, and only in the form of a prophecy by Jesus, written in the future tense. In addition, the minute detail on every page of every N.T. book proves that the books were written by people who experienced the first century, leaving us no reason to doubt that they were written by the men whose names they bear. As to which books were first, a lot of Christians think Paul’s letters were written before the gospels. Maybe they are right, but, in any case, I disagree with them. There is some evidence in the Bible that at least one of the gospels had already been written before Paul even wrote his first letter to Timothy. Paul quotes from Luke’s Gospel in I Timothy 5:18, when he says the following: For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.” (I Timothy 5:18) The second part of that quote, saying that the worker deserves his wages, is taken directly from Luke 10:7. Those words are found nowhere else in 6 Scripture. The Gospel of Luke had, therefore, already been written before Paul even wrote his first letter to Timothy.
